IN SHOCK The actress’ Instagram post says it all.
MANILA, Philippines — Actress Kim Chiu was on her way to a shoot on Wednesday morning and asleep inside her van when it was peppered with bullets. Had she been sitting up and reading her script, she would have been hit.
In a scene straight out of a TV series, two motorcycle-riding gunmen opened fire at her black van as it stopped before a red light on the corner of Katipunan Avenue and C.P. Garcia Street in Quezon City around 6:30 a.m., barely missing the 29-year-old actress, her driver and personal assistant.
“Kung ’di ako humiga tatamaan talaga ako (If I wasn’t lying down, I could have been hit),” the actress told “TV Patrol” in an interview hours later.The ABS-CBN star, her driver Wilfredo Taperla, 42, and PA Nayrin Nasara, 19, were unhurt.
“I’m scared. Why is this happening to me? Did the gunmen simply make a mistake? Did they fire at the wrong vehicle? Because I don’t have enemies? I never meant harm to anybody,” Chiu told TV Patrol, echoing what she wrote on Instagram shortly after the attack. The gunmen fled toward Old Balara. Investigators recovered eight bullet shells from the scene.
While investigators have yet to establish the motive, they were “not discounting’’ the possibility that it was a case of mistaken identity.
“The mistaken identity is one of the angles we’re looking at, but the investigation is still ongoing,’’ said Maj. Elmer Monsalve, chief of the Quezon City Police District’s investigation unit.
He said they were still looking at the trajectory of the bullets. A slug was found inside the van.
Chiu’s van was traversing Katipunan Avenue from her subdivision around the area and stopped before a red light near the corner of C.P. Garcia Street. Then two men on board a motorcycle opened fire at the van.
“What I heard were small blasts. Manipis ang tunog. I went to my driver and my personal assistant (PA) to ask what happened. I first checked on how they were doing because I saw that the windshield on the driver’s side got punctured because of the bullets. He could’ve gotten hit,” Chiu said in the TV interview.
Once assured that her staff members were alright, Chiu went back to her seat, where she discovered the one slug that could have hit her had she not been lying down asleep during the shooting.
She then called her sister. “I actually called a lot of people because I didn’t know what to do. Nag-hang ako. I was inside the van while the police officers were outside making their report,” she recalled.
Taperla, Chiu’s driver, told reporters they were on their way to Chiu’s taping when they were fired upon.
“We heard gunshots, but we didn’t know at first that our vehicle was their target,” he said.
The actress, who first shot to fame when she emerged as grand winner of the teen edition of the reality show Pinoy Big Brother in 2006, went straight to her taping for an upcoming movie after the attack. Police took custody of the van.
The “Love Thy Woman” lead star then arranged to be fetched by another driver and be brought to work. “I guess it was adrenalin rush. I still went to work and taped for two scenes,” she admitted.